Experts Are Really, Really Worried About The State Of The 2020 Census

(HuffPost – Politics) — “The business of counting Americans isn’t glamorous, Lowenthal said. But she said that doing it well was crucial to ensuring the guarantees of the Constitution.”

The U.S. Census Bureau is significantly scaling back its preparations for the 2020 census, which experts say could compromise the agency’s ability to accurately conduct its constitutionally mandated count of people.

An inaccurate census could have drastic consequences, with the potential to hit minority communities the hardest.

The survey, which the Constitution requires take place every 10 years, helps allocate hundreds of billions of federal dollars to state and local governments, according to the Census Project, a group that tracks the census. The survey data is also used to draw electoral districts, because each district is legally required to have roughly the same number of people.

Census officials initially planned to do three dress rehearsals of the census ahead of 2020, but cut two of those tests because of a funding shortfall. Experts also note that members of minority communities may be hesitant to give personal information to the government, and that the bureau currently doesn’t have enough partnership specialists in place to begin to build their trust.